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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378075">We'll Be Alright</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazemayonnaise/pseuds/bazemayonnaise'>bazemayonnaise</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Basira/Daisy if you squint, Canon Asexual Character, Lonely!Martin, M/M, RADWIMPS singing 'daijoubu' turns me into a 2009-era songfic kid, Weathering With You AU, he/him enby Jon, nobody in the Magnus Archives is white, pining jon, pre-MAG160, spoilers up to MAG140, transmasc Martin, 天気の子</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:08:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,399</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazemayonnaise/pseuds/bazemayonnaise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I wish I could make the sun shine for her. For him. For everyone...<br/>He felt his knees buckle and then he felt himself fall—<br/>And then he was in the sky. <br/>Blue, blue sky-</p><p>Martin finds himself a child of the sky. Jon pines.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>We'll Be Alright</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Very much based on 'Weathering With You' or '天気の子'. Can be read without watching, though I would rec listening to the OST while reading http://open.spotify.com/album/2BcCxJ3EWhsd4IyN8XJA3q  </p><p>cw: brief references to suicidal thoughts</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>「大丈夫?」ってさぁ 君が気付いてさ 聞くから</span>
</p><p>
  <span>「大丈夫だよ」って 僕は慌てて言うけど</span>
</p><p>
  <span>なんでそんなことを 言うんだよ</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blue, blue sky-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, clenched insides, rush of air-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, blue sky, blue sky, white clouds-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It should be cold, it should hurt, rain like glass to cut him, wind like razors, wind so loud as it rushed around him, wind whipped against him, ripping at his clothes-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, blue sky, blue sky and Martin continues to fall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin woke feeling like the world had been kicked out from under him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brown. Brown, black, the dusty pastel colours of paper folders, the sickly greens and yellows of old books, the deep brown wood and glass display cases, the thick, musty air, the acrid heat of the portable heater under his desk…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The archive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His desk, his office. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin took a deep breath, as if he could chase the sensation of fresh wind in his lungs, like he could taste the rain on his face, like he could transport that </span>
  <em>
    <span>blue </span>
  </em>
  <span>down into the depths of this bunker…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But no. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A dream. Another dream, the fourth of its kind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin would find himself falling — the most absolute sky surrounding him, engulfing him, blue beyond belief, blue beyond words, just the white of distant clouds to remind him what not-blue could look like. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And falling without Fear. No sweeping terror at the fall, no dawning horror at his eventual destination. Just Martin and his connection to the sky. Arms out, a perfect crack in the sky. No sound but the distant clink of glass, like a wind chime on a clear summer day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It always stunned him, mentally and physically, brain wiped clean, body unflailing. Pure and unadulterated calm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sat himself up in his chair, using his sleeve to wipe at the drool at the corner of his mouth. Typical him, dreaming something so lush and waking up a sprawled mess on his office desk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He took a deep, crappy breath of office air, just to remind him where he was and what his place in this world really was… and got back to work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin was already pulling the hood of his coat up as he left his flat, not surprised to confirm that yes, it was still raining. Not unheard of in London, but still annoying. Martin didn’t think he’d seen the sun in a month, and it was starting to grate. He could feel it in him, clogging up his heart with grey, and he could feel it from everyone around him, too. His bus driver, the one who did his route to and from work every other day, had stopped smiling a week back; just stared, unfeeling out the front window. His fellow commuters, soaked and steaming in the heated bus sniffed and sighed, the permadamp of their clothes and the seats and the floors and the windows weighing down on everyone like a second skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>People were turning nasty, too. Spiteful. There was a blocked drain on the high street near his house that collected a lake-sized puddle of water next to the pavement and more than once Martin had looked up just in time to catch a driver swerving just that little bit closer to the puddle to send a wave of freezing, dirty water his way. He’d started having to cross the road a little later down, missing the turn from his road and having to double back, all to avoid getting drenched two minutes from his house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hated the wet dog smell everyone brought into the archive, and he was pretty sure the amount of humidity they were making wasn’t exactly ideal for the books and folders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Jon were here, Martin was sure he’d make everyone turn off their heaters and tell them to work in the cold. Better everything was cold and damp than warm and the evaporated rain from their sodden clothes accidentally activated a Leitner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin made sure to turn his heater to its max when he got in that morning, the smell of burning dust immediately blasting out. It was a wonder the fire alarms never went off; these fans always made his flat’s alarms act up…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin stripped out of his coat and let it make its little puddle from where it hung on the back of his office door, then went to make himself a tea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only when he was stirring his sugar in that he realised the fire alarms probably didn’t work in the Institute, that they’d not had a single fire drill I'm what must be two years now, he’d yet to spot an emergency evacuation sign, and he wasn’t entirely sure where the fire extinguishers were anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sat back down at his desk, warming his hands on his mug, gently wondering about how that didn’t actually surprise him all that much. He checked his calendar, then what could theoretically be called Peter’s schedule if the man actually used it, then got to work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d had to restrict himself to two hospital visits a week. He’d been going so often the last month that he’d not had time to do laundry or to cook for himself and even though he never saw the others, it was absolutely miserable sitting alone in the office, desperately hungry and in week-old clothes. It was making him feel actually inhuman — actively inhuman, and though he wasn’t cultivating human connection, he felt that he did at least owe the people next to him on the bus a bar of soap every other day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One night for Jon, one night for his mum. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t sure which he dreaded more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He mostly felt empty when he went to see Jon now, which he supposed was preferable to the nausea he drowned in when he was sat with his mum. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he still had eight hours before he made his way out to the hospital, just across the river.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d seen Jon on Monday, so he’d see his mum tonight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that either of them knew he’d been there. Not that it made any difference. Not that it made it easier. Not that -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin let his nails dig into his palms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Archive. Statement. Read a statement. File some files. Disappear into the work. Disappear into doing this. Saving lives. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ha. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought of that, of Martin being the hero, saving lives. His mind rejected the thought. No. Martin was doing the grunt work that led to the lives being saved. If Jon came back — </span>
  <em>
    <span>when </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jon came back, he would need a coherent set of recorded statements, fully researched by his assistants. ...By his assistants and by him. Peter’s assistant. The Archival assistants. The people who worked at the Institute. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d been trying to get through a couple a day, three, sometimes, when he was feeling pretty shit and needed to knock himself out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nearly five when he picked up the third statement. He didn’t particularly follow a nine to five structure, he got in when he got in and left when he left, but visiting hours were short… so he tucked the statement into his backpack with his laptop, filled his flask with another cup for the road and headed out of the Institute, making sure to take as many back-routes as possible before pushing open the heavy Institute doors, hood up and out into the rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only a short walk, but his coat was dripping as he stamped his feet on the already-soaked doormat of the hospital. His route up to his mum’s room was well-worn and the nurses recognised him now, so he gave them a brusque wave as he trudged over to his mother’s side. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was in a room with three other women, all comatose, waiting to die. Martin watched her face for a good, long while. He supposed he was trying to find something on it, signs that, now that she was dying, she might have… changed. Found something nice to say. It always happened like that in films, didn’t it? The mum, who’d spent the whole time being a right asshat would turn around on her deathbed and make some proclamation that she’d done it all out of love. Not healthy, but something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin wasn’t sure what the last thing she’d said to him had been. Something about the milk having gone off. Martin replying </span>
  <em>
    <span>well if you didn’t buy two pints every time it wouldn’t go off, you know I don’t drink dairy</span>
  </em>
  <span> and her replying with something mean and him telling her to leave off and storming away to work and…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin took a deep breath of bleached hospital air. That faint whiff of piss and anemia, of shitty coffee and of lino floors. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least his mum had the best view, for whatever it was worth. She was nearest the window, and had she been cognizant enough to know it, had the luxury of watching two straight months of rain and grey skies. He watched the rain now, the patter of rain drops at they splashed against the glass, forming pools of miniature reflections of London on the ledge. It glittered in the late afternoon light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin closed his eyes and thought about the last truly good memory he had of his mum. They’d been at a park, just taking a walk. The day had been pleasant; the surprising day in Spring where you could tell Summer was just around the corner. The sun was shining but not blaring, the wind was crisp but not biting, the sky blue and went on forever. He didn’t think they’d spoken a single word to each other the entire walk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hoped his mum died on a sunny day. He hoped she’d wake for just a moment, just to see that twinkle in a bright blue sky. That her last memory of earth would be of the soft sun on her skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished she’d wake up, just for one last walk in the park. They wouldn’t say anything, but they’d know that they loved each other, and she would move on to whatever was next and he would move on with his life and their souls would be cleansed. That’s all he needed. No apology, no winning an argument. Just a walk in the park on a sunny spring day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin wiped at his cheek, feeling a tear rolling across it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, not a tear… he wasn’t crying… he frowned, opened his eyes. Rain. It was rain, dripping across his face. From his hair? No… from the window?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin was half-standing before he could realise it. There was a building, across town, enveloped in a beam of sunlight. A crack in the sky, lighting up one rooftop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He glanced at his mum, who hadn’t stirred, then back towards the sunlight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wanted it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He needed it. To feel that sun on his skin. To end the endless rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He picked up his backpack and his coat, only pausing to give his mum’s hand a quick squeeze. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As far as he could make out, the sunlight was coming from over Tower Hill way. It was hard to tell what exact building it was by the time he was street level, but he could follow the hole in the sky from which the light poured, speeding up as he realised that if he was too slow, he might miss it. That this haven of light might disappear, once again enveloped by cloud. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He busted out his peak London dodges as he swerved around groups of tourists, deftly skirting past slow-moving students and distracted businessmen, using every available gap between people to move closer and closer to his patch of sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he could make out the block of disused flats, the streets had thinned out and he was freer to slow down to a brisk walk, head still tilted towards the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The building was boarded up and looked like one of those brutalist 50s concrete buildings, all grey juts and fortified windows. Martin wasn’t a particular fan of the style and was pretty pleased the signs indicated the building had one foot in the grave, marked for demolition. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tilted his head back as far as it could go and… yeah. There it was. That beam of sunshine hitting the roof of this building. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looked around, but it didn’t look like it was an active building site; there was no office nor were there men in hi-vis around… and the thick graffiti on the boards probably meant they’d been up for closer to a decade than to months.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin did a loop of the building and found a board that had been smashed in, most likely by some bored teens turned 'urban explorer'. He did another quick check that he wasn’t being watched (by any human) and clambered through the hole. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was almost strange, how easily this was coming to him. He tried to think about how he’d feel about doing this, even a year ago. He never would have left the hospital, let alone to the building — forget entering the building site! He might have joined Jon, or been forced by Tim or Sasha, but he would have complained the entire time, not even shutting up to reduce their chances of not getting caught. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He picked his way across the concrete floor, broken glass crunching underneath his trainers, rain still falling heavily on everywhere but the roof. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The main glass doors had been smashed in. Martin took one of the torches from his backpack and stashed a spare in his coat pocket, just in case the lights got darker than he expected, then made his way to the stairs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a pretty easy journey up: the concrete stairs wound in a coil through the spine of the building, and after twelve flights of stairs, he was more exhausted than he was anything else. He took a quick break to swig at his tea and ate half a protein bar he had stashed in his front pocket for the commute, then climbed the last flight of stairs. The door at the top was metal and thick, but it was a fire door so it opened easy enough up to the roof. He used a nearby fire extinguisher to prop the door open so that he wouldn’t be trapped up here, then clambered up the few stairs left until he was outside, on the roof… In the sun. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shuddered as if he hadn’t just walked into the warmth of an early summer sun. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heat on his skin, birdsong- birdsong! how long had it been since he’d heard birdsong? The roof had obviously been intended as a rooftop garden in its inception, huge concrete troughs full of ignored plants spreading their tendrils out far beyond their intended homes lining the roof. There was a patch of grass stretching across the room; a fake lawn, now riddled with weeds and flowers, but obviously shaped to be big enough for a game of footie or a cricket match on a late summer evening. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin stood in the middle of the field and took a deep breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>God, it felt good. How long had it been since he’d felt warm? Naturally warm. That clean kind of warm you can only get from the sun? How long had it been since he’d seen a blue sky? A white cloud? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was kind of magical how quickly his gloom dissipated, standing there in the sun. He could literally feel the stress and the hatred evaporate off of him with the rain. Breathing felt good and healthy, not clogged and thick with human fog.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If only his mum was well enough to come here, for one final walk. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I wish I could make the sun shine for her. For him. For everyone...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt his knees buckle and then he felt himself fall—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he was in the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue, blue sky-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, clenched insides, rush of air-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, blue sky, blue sky, white clouds-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It should be cold, it should hurt, rain like glass to cut him, wind like razors, wind so loud as it rushed around him, wind whipped against him, ripping at his clothes-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue sky, blue sky, blue sky-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Falling like being cradled, earth stretched out before him-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin woke up with his face buried in the grass. It was warm and soft on his cheek, but it wasn’t particularly comfortable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A dream. A dream about falling that wasn’t a nightmare. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was good, right? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That meant it wasn’t one of Them controlling him, or stealing him, or marking him as one of their own, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If it was the Void or whatever, the fear of falling or the fear of the expanse, the fear of the unknown, then surely he’d feel… fear? Pure, gut-wrenching, horrible fear?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Martin hadn’t. Martin had felt… Comfortable. At peace. At home. Welcome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was easy, of course, to convince himself that he’d fallen asleep in the patch of sunny grass, that it was a harmless dream, and to take advantage of the rest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was when the dreams started recurring. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dreams of the sky. Dreams of the sun. Dreams of the wind forming huge dragons, keening and calling for him, whipping across the sky with all the intensity of meteors. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He found that he was more scared that he was getting recurring dreams than anything else, to be honest. When he got his eighth dream in as many days, it started to feel like maybe there was a sign. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tried to bring it up while he was sat at Jon’s bedside one visit, but he couldn’t find the words. He didn’t think the comatose Jon would appreciate being an unwilling witness to Martin’s mental break. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Jon could hear him, wherever he was, he didn’t need Martin moaning about being in the possible grip of a new power. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon looked grey in the grey light of the rainy day. Martin heaved a sigh. Not that he expected Jon to look beautiful, practically dead as he was in this hospital bed, but people were supposed to get better in hospitals. People were supposed to regain vitality in their rest. Jon’s deep brown skin had an ashy, muted colour to it, like he was a photo of himself, desaturated. He didn’t look… there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin turned to the window and closed his eyes, clenching his hands together. He wasn’t particularly religious, certainly didn’t believe in any monotheistic God, but he’d adopted some of his father’s alleged spiritualism, stuff he got from the internet mostly. Martin had never lived in Japan, but he could remember a couple of his earliest summers visiting his dad’s mum out there, going to the big Buddhist temples, investigating the small road-side shrines, nearly tripping over small offering-sites in the mountains behind his grandma’s house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked the idea of nature-based gods. He supposed if Fears could have their own Gods, nature was allowed her mountain spirits and air dragons too. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Please,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he prayed, </span>
  <em>
    <span>if there is any spirit in the sky, let Jon feel the sun on his face. Let him remember what it feels like, out here. Let him come home. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He waited a few beats with his eyes closed, just to see whether he could feel the room warm up… but it didn’t. Typical. Maybe they were right. Maybe there were no ‘good’ entities looking out for the poor humans on earth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, Jon, I tried.” Martin tried to smile, tried to make his lips do anything resembling a convincing show of ‘being okay’, but he could barely convince himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin paused. There was something, a small sound. He cocked his head, trying to listen for the source. It was like a faint tinkling. He checked the heart machine, but it hadn’t changed… the window? He expected to see hail, but no, just the same old rain, pattering against the glass. He frowned. It seemed familiar. Like… Like a wind chime on a summer day. Like ice in a glass. The sound of clear, summer day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked back down at Jon, and there he was, haloed in a golden glow, hair catching the glimmer of sunlight and his premature white streaks lit up like an angel’s. His face had warmed, and for the first time in months, he looked </span>
  <em>
    <span>asleep </span>
  </em>
  <span>rather than dead. Like any moment, he would roll over and yawn and ask Martin why he was looking at him like that in that suspicious voice he got when he caught Martin watching him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin turned to look at the sky and was hit by how much blue he could see — it was like a square mile of cloud had been erased to make room for the sun. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin laughed. An out-loud, unbelieving, joyful laugh. What a happy accident! What a beautiful coincidence! It was nice to say something good for once and to have it happen, rather than to say something like ‘well it can’t get worse’ and to be proven extremely wrong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon let out a small breath, and Martin felt himself go all soft, filled with something like hope for the first time in… for the first time in a long, long while. Jesus, it was just a bit of sunshine and Martin was nearly busting a nut over it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughed to himself, sniffed a bit because he wasn’t going to cry over Jon again, touched Jon’s hand and left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Statement of Akiharu Fuyuko, regarding the ‘hare onna’, or sunshine girl, recorded by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Statement begins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I was in high school, my friends and I were in the ‘supernatural happenings’ club. We had a mini-zine that we published for our school, and it actually sold pretty well, considering it was just the five of us going and interviewing our neighbours about ghosts and spirits they claimed to see.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of us believed, I think, either because we’d seen a ghost before or because we were raised to be spiritual… there was one girl in the group who was from a family of actual shrine maidens, so I think that’s why we had some popularity… we would use her family’s shrine as our interview base and when we didn’t have a story that week, we would interview her mum about the gods. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I liked to do the illustrations for the stories, I was really into watercolour, and I’m not boasting when I say I saw some people had cut out my drawings to use as bookmarks or to decorate their lockers with. I actually had one girl who wanted to buy my original drawings from me, for quite a lot of money! </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes we would interview our school friends for the smaller stories, to pad out the zines. They were mostly chancers, or people who got scared of the dark and thought they’d seen a youkai, but we’d use them anyway because that way the interviewee’s friends were more likely to buy the zine… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One summer, we had a girl claim that her best friend was a hare-onna, or a sunshine girl… someone who could bring out the sun. You know that phrase, English people go on holiday, and when they come home, their friends say ‘I hope you brought the sun back with you!’ it’s kind of like that, but as we researched the story, we kind of found that it had its roots in human sacrifice? which was super dark, so obviously we dug digger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Apparently in the olden days, girls would be chosen to speak to the sky and to offer themselves up to the spirits in exchange for good weather, like in harvest times and stuff. It wasn’t like, humans killed a girl every year, but one girl would pray and the sky would clear up that day, and then more and more of her would end up connected to the sky until she could no longer maintain a physical connection to earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obviously this was a great story for our zine: the girls at our school loved the idea that someone they knew was a sky maiden. After we’d run our story, she started offering sunny days for a couple hundred yen, and girls would flock to her, asking her to make sure their date days with their boyfriends were sunny, that the school festival wouldn’t be waterlogged, sports days and family outings and beach trips and one day, she didn’t come to school. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started to go around the school like a joke: she’d used too much of her power and she’d lost her physical form, but their teacher was told she had a cold, and everyone forgot about it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she still hadn’t come back the next monday, the rumours started up again. Teachers thought maybe she’d been transferred, but that wouldn’t stop girls from gossiping. Someone even came to our club and claimed they saw the hare onna in the sky that morning. It was true, though. There had been warnings of rainy weeks leading up to some abnormally strong typhoon weather, but they never came. The morning weather reports were so confused, because we got clear, sunny days interspersed with some pretty tame rain, nothing like they’d promised. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The club volunteered me to go to the girl’s house. She was in my year, so I had more of a reason to be visiting, even if she wasn’t in my class.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a pretty normal house: residential district, detached house, her family name on the plate. No nearby shrines or temples, no weird weather over the house. I half expected to turn up to her house and for it to be on a thundery mountain, but no luck, I guess. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mother let me in. I knew as soon as I saw her that her daughter wasn’t here anymore. Missing, her mother told me. For a week. The police had recommended not telling the school, so they could follow some lines of enquiry and so that we wouldn’t get freaked out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She let me up into the hare onna’s room. Sorry. Her name was Natsuka. I thought it was kind of funny at the time, her name meaning ‘summer’. I had to bite my lip when Natsuka’s mother opened her room. Every wall, and I mean every wall — the ceiling too, was plastered with cut-outs of the sky. Ads from magazines, printouts of art, black and white weather reports… and next to her bed, cut-outs of my illustrations. Drawings of her, the ones I’d drawn to help advertise her job as the hare onna. Her whole room, made to look like the sky. It was beautiful. Staggering, you know. It’s… we don’t really do that, I suppose, in Japan. Our rooms aren’t decorated with posters and prints like they do in London. Not like this, anyway. It was so much, I remember it took being pushed before I could take a step in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, I know it’s weird, but her room smelled… clean. Like a breath of fresh air in spring, you know? I remember it being so weird I had to look out of the window, like I expected leaves to blow in. And there was a round too, like a tinkling sound, like someone was clinking loads of glass together, or like… like a windchime. Delicate and pretty, but almost deafening in the room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mother went downstairs. I think she was pretty upset being in the room, so me and I rooted around a bit, taking photos of the walls, but a bit half-hearted. I mean, I guess I supposed at this point that she was probably going to be found dead, and I… didn’t think we’d be allowed to publish the photos in our magazine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That twinkling sound again. Louder, now. Forceful, like it was trying to make me hear something. Not words, not exactly, but something calling out to</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good weather we’ve been having.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon blinked, then looked up from his statement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira was stood opposite him, arms in her pockets.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nice weather we’ve been having, don’t you think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon felt his heart-rate pick up. Basira, doing niceties. Basira engaging in small-talk. Jon was terrified. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” he said, cautious. “It’s nice to have a bit of sun, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, lovely.” Basira was taking half-steps closer, and Jon found himself watching her hands in her hoodie pockets. He couldn’t tell, but she could definitely be concealing a weapon. She was nearly at his desk now, looking at him in that way that told him that he was absolutely under investigation for something dodgy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you… did you need to ask me something Basira? I just have to finish this statement…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just checking in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh. Okay. Well, I am fine, and I really have to finish this statement…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm.” Basira tapped her lip, overacting ‘casual’. “You watch the news much, Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not… not so much anymore. Not since all this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah, nah me either. Used to have it on on the radio, back when I was on the beat, you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh… huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, it’s weird, I’ve had to download a weather app for my phone, now. Just to check what it’s going to be like before I leave. Never had to worry about it before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uhhuh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You check the weather app before you leave?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh, not particularly?” Jon could feel himself pressing back in his chair, for whatever good those two centimeters could do. “I suppose I leave it up to chance. I have a pocket umbrella in my bag just in case, so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Getting much use out of it lately?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can’t say that I have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basira, are you going to tell me what’s happening, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you have to pull it out of me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You're scaring me, Basira.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira nodded to herself, then her arm moved in her pocket and Jon was already flinching, preparing himself for a new wound — a gunshot, or a deep stab from some shiv—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira put her phone down on the desk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s rained for three straight months, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon frowned, looking down at the open app. It was a calendar of the month, every day with its little grey cloud icon. “No it hasn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, it has.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Jon said, “It hasn’t. Maybe while I was… asleep, but it’s not rained once this fortnight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Basira said, switching apps to her photo gallery. A selfie of Basira in the rain. Selfie of Basira in the rain. Selfie of Basira in the rain. Photo of Jon in the sun. Photo of Jon in the sun. Photo of- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve been </span>
  <em>
    <span>stalking me</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Every time you leave this building the sun starts shining. You know anything about that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon snorted. “If this is a prank-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh you think I have time to prank you these days, Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t think you did, but—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. Whatsapp me. Video call. Let’s go.” Basira left Jon’s office without ceremony, so he took out his own phone and video called her. She was striding up the stairs towards the main door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be ready to come up here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon started to follow her, watching all the while as Basira pushed open the Institute doors and stepped out into a horrendous rain. She was almost soaked the moment she did. Jon half watched her on the screen, half from the bottom of the stairs. Then, reaching the doors, he stepped out, bracing himself for — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sun. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was like there was some sort of bubble, a forcefield around him. The rain just… didn’t fall on him. He could see a wall where the rain began, slowly retreating out of his way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira came to his side, dripping. “Nice weather we’ve been having,” she repeated. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hare onna,” Jon said to his audience, Daisy and Basira levelling him their best ‘who did you piss off this time’. “If we’re to believe Fuyuko’s statement, the hare onna has a connection to the sky, slowly sacrificing their… mortality in exchange for good weather.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds like a fair deal to me,” Daisy said, half like she expected a hi-five, half like she expected to be hit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My only problem is,” Jon said, ignoring her, “If I’m this hare onna, I don’t remember touching or… activating it in any way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what’s evil about it,” Basira added. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t necessarily have to be evil, does it?” Jon asked, vaguely hopeful he’d been gifted something </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice </span>
  </em>
  <span>for once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How likely is sunshine to be a Evil Eye watcher thing?” asked Daisy, “Maybe it needs sunny days to see all proper since it’s old as fuck.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Again, we don’t know me being a Hare Onna is a bad thing-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hare otoko.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon glanced up, to where Martin was hovering in the doorway. He looked like he’d spoken accidentally and was surprised anyone could see him. “You’re…” Martin lifted his tea to his lips, but didn’t sip. He sighed, then came into the room. “‘Onna’ is girl, ‘otoko’ is boy. You’d be a hare otoko. Hare is sunny.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you’re telling me,” Daisy said in her drawl, “Jon’s our sunny boy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira made a gagging noise, which Jon was very thankful for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, that’s quite enough of that I think,” Jon said. “Thank you, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...Yeah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you… have you heard of the phenomena before? The ‘hare onna’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shrugged. “I guess? Mostly in anime, though, so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira rolled her eyes. “So no, then. Don’t you have an empty calendar to be staring at?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright Basira,” Daisy calmed, managing to beat everyone else to be the first to object. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, I’m just trying to make sure Jon doesn’t end up giving up his goddamn mortality so he doesn’t get wet on the way to the tube.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Mortality’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Jon assured Martin, “Just read a statement that seems to suggest the more the hare... is there a non-gendered alternative?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hare ningen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you. The more the hare ningen uses their powers, the closer their link to the sky and the weaker their link to the earth…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon’s going to evaporate,” Daisy translated, doing a sarcastic wiggle of her fingers to demonstrate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin took a deep breath, not looking away from Jon. Then he let it out, downed his tea and nodded. “Right.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right?” Basira asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got work to be getting back to…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course you do.” Basira waved her hand, dismissing Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, Martin,” Jon said, “Have you noticed anything odd with the weather?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...Should I have?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ.” Basira sat, her back pointedly towards Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The rain?” Jon prompted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...Oh. Yeah. That it’s been raining forever?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t think that’s a bit odd?” Daisy asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, it’s London isn’t it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“London, innit,” Basira repeated. “Just three months, unrelenting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright Basira, I don’t log every time it stops raining. I’ve got bigger things to be dealing with.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, right, evil plans, I forgot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can get off your high horse and all-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s wrong Martin, did you find your backbone when you switched sides?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Basira,” Daisy chided,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t helping” Jon tried to say, but was immediately talked over by the three others, who were quickly devolving into an out-and-out fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon could feel it in the air, almost like the thickness of the air before a storm, the charge of electricity moments before lightning strikes— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tungsten lights flickered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sensitive to any change in light, all four of them were stood back to back to back to back, arms up in a facsimile of fight-ready poses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy cocked her head. “Was that gunfire?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s eyes glazed as he tried to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thunder.” Martin looked terrified, but certain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira instantly relaxed. “Jumping at our fucking shadows.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon made himself relax too, but continued to watch Martin. As far as he was aware Martin didn’t have a fear of storms, and was likely just reacting to the lightning in an associative way, a prelude to a bigger battle, but he still felt like he needed to comfort Martin. Wanted to comfort Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Daisy said, and Jon had to force himself to look at her. “Did you make that happen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The lights flickering?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The lightning.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon frowned. “I don’t… think so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only,” Daisy continued, “Bit of a convenient time to strike, right when we’re all bickering.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you feel it?” Basira asked, “Like you were channelling something? Sunshine’s one thing, but storms pushes you right into Michael Crew territory.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Daisy took one long step into Jon’s personal space and inhaled, long and deep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Daisy, what the-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Michael Crew had an ozone smell, didn’t he. Jon still smells like Jon.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could hear the ‘for now’,” Jon said, not liking the look she was giving him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You been touching Leitners?" Daisy asked, and Jon felt his blood chill. She'd switched, even in the seconds it took to think about Crew. He didn't feel Hunted, not yet, but he felt hunted, and he could tell it was only moments before that distinction in capitals meant very little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No. I haven't." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You part of the Void, now, too? Become its avatar while you were asleep?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No! … Not that I know of, anyway."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira and Daisy looked at each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I mean it's not like I get told anything about what happens to me," Jon tried, "I'm not aware of being any avatar but the Beholding’s."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That seemed to pacify them, which meant Jon's mouth opened itself to continue with "I did feel it though, like sparks surrounding me. Protecting me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh great." Basira gave him an up and down. "Strip."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Excuse me?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Strip. I want to see if you've got a lightning scar."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I haven't been hit by lightning, Basira."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I want to see for myself."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Being certain is one thing, my personal boundaries are another."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Martin fucked off when you weren't looking and we're absolutely not interested."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It doesn't matter. I don't consent." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon could see Basira's jaw tighten… but she just looked away. "Fine. Sorry for pushing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...Yeah." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So sunny boy's got lightning powers now," Daisy said, starting to sound like her own blood was returning to a more regular pressure. "Might be useful in a fight. Worth checking if Elias wants to monologue at you, Basira?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Something tells me we don't want to give him something more to salivate over, if he doesn't know already."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So we just… wait?" Jon asked, vaguely hopeful that they hadn't either dragged him to the forest for execution or for experimentation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Suppose so," Daisy said with a sigh. "But you're walking me home, I just got these jeans dry. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was weird, to finish work and to have Basira and Daisy waiting at the door for him. For the first time it felt less like a military escort and more like friends waiting at the school gate. They were already mid-conversation when he got to them, and they folded him in as they worked their way through the institute, talking about some radio drama they both half-remembered listening to. Jon didn't follow the conversation, but allowed himself to zone in and out and to not think about anything as he let their 'what actor was that' wash over him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they got to the Institute doors, they paused to take in the rain. It was so thick, it looked like a wall, the sound already thunderous. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Avatars first," Basira said, nudging Jon towards the door and opening it for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon took an excursionary step forward, then plunged into the rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which… stayed as rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stood, for a long, long moment, feeling the pound of it against his skin, head tilted to the sky, letting it batter him. It was almost incredible, the smell of it against the pavement, the rush of it in his ears, the great freeze of it, working into his blood-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stumbled back through the door, clothes and hair plastered to his skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh," Basira said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh," Daisy echoed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon dripped on the entrance floor, already beginning to shiver. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe you used up all your juice when you summoned the thunder?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you feeling hungry? Feel like eating any statements?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shook his head. "Just, cold."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Supernaturally?" Daisy asked, reaching out to touch his arm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just got soaked to the ruddy bone, Daisy." Jon shivered. "I'm going to shower."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, giving up already Archivist?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes, Basira, I'm giving up. I'm having a shower, changing, and sleeping in the bunker." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe you were overthinking the sunshine. Maybe just think about… not rain."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I haven't walked home every day thinking about summer in the sun."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What were you thinking about?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't know, the end of the world? Whether something was going to eat me on the way home? Whether I should step in front of a bus?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So, gloomy thoughts!" Daisy said, skirting around Jon's actual words. "Maybe the sky's trying to tell you to lighten up." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Think about something really depressing," Basira said, in a tone that was absolutely a command. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"More depressing than humans destroying the earth?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Your childhood pet dying."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I didn't have one." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine, your mum dying."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Didn't have one."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you fucking with me, Jon?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was raised by my grandma."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine, Martin dying." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not an unusual thought, but the jolt of it shot through him anyway. His heart felt heavy, like it was made of stone, or like he had been poisoned, muscles clenching in fear. He knew his breathing was shallowing and his vision was tunnelling…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh. No change." Basira let the door close. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So… Jon isn't the weather boy?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Reasonable doubt," Basira said in reply. "Not taking you off of the suspect list just yet. We'll see what happens to the sky tomorrow." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right," he heard Basira say as he made his way back down to the spare bed and to his change of clothes, "Taxi home?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s fingers clicked against his empty mug, drumming an empty pattern. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t be surprised, he guessed, that Basira and Daisy had noticed the odd weather around Jon. They always looked at him with suspicion, and they had good reason to do so: it wasn’t just his own safety at risk, but theirs too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, that they already had all this information about </span>
  <em>
    <span>hare onna</span>
  </em>
  <span> was… scary. All it would take would be for Jon to decide to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>who was causing the sun, and he’d be stood in Martin’s office with that accusing, betrayed look, and he’d never trust Martin again— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin rolled one of his sleeves up, just far enough to catch the flash of skin that was no longer skin,  looking more like the glass of an aquarium refracting light through water, or like a bubble or — he laughed to himself, slightly manic — kind of like a lava lamp, gentle bubbles of molten drifting through him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t hurt, far from, and he could still </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>his arm, still knew it was there, but he knew it wasn’t good, and he knew it was only growing, the more he used the power. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, he hadn’t wanted Jon to catch a cold on the way home, those first few days he’d shown up at the Archive after waking up in the hospital. Martin had just hoped, or wished, or prayed, or </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>that the skies would clear up, just for long enough for Jon to make it home, and it had. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Jon had seemed better for it. Or, at least, Martin knew he’d be worse and more stressed if he’d been drenched on the way to and from work every day. So Martin had continued to do it. All the way up to the lightning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d just been so </span>
  <em>
    <span>angry </span>
  </em>
  <span>— it was irrational, they were all tired and worked up from being trapped in the Archive, frustrated that they had no clue what was happening to them, it wasn’t Basira’s fault, but he’d felt it anyway, to be looked at like he was a suspect when he was working just as hard to keep them all alive, and why couldn’t anyone just </span>
  <em>
    <span>understand </span>
  </em>
  <span>and then he’d felt it, like he’d pulled the lightning from the air, like he was wielding a javelin and was ready to spear it through her, through them, all of them— But then he’d seen Jon, and then Daisy, and Basira— and before he realised what he was doing, the power discharged through the building instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d nearly hurt them. Badly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thought it was a nice power. Sunny days, for God’s sake, that’s all he wanted! Not to murder his friends because he got pissed at them!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ugh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now he had to decide what he was going to do about it. Give himself in to Basira and Daisy, let them take him to the forest to be put down? Give himself up to Jon before being treated with suspicion? Talk to Peter? Elias? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘Hey Jon, just uh, popping in to say, it’s not you who’s the </span>
  <em>
    <span>hare ningen</span>
  </em>
  <span> it’s me, and look, I don’t really know whose avatar I am, but I really just wanted to make the sun shine for you!’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin groaned as his head hit the desk. He would rather face the Daisy-Basira firing squad than offer that weak-arse poetry to Jon. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t true, but he had to face the reality: if he told Jon, he would be mortified for the rest of his life and would never be able to spend ten seconds in the same room as him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a knock at the door and Martin groaned again. “I’m busy, Peter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me, I’m afraid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin jolted up, finding Jon stood in the open doorway, fist still resting against the doorway like he was embarrassed to have caught Martin out at a difficult time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” Martin tried to make it look like he wasn’t panicking, then took a moment to pause, and let it all just… flow away, like Peter had taught him. “I’m busy, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, yes, sorry to disturb your… nap, Martin. I just hoped to ask you some questions.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t napping,” Martin said weakly. “I do have things to be doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were just closing your eyes?” Jon said in that hopeful, half-sarcastic way that broke Martin’s heart so much more than any anger or disappointment anyone at the Archive could fling at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was preparing to read a statement.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” Jon looked down, and Martin could tell Jon believed it, and was genuinely debating whether or not to bother Martin any more. “It’s just a quick question, Martin, I’m sorry. It’s just, you know how I get with technology and I don’t want to rely on Google Translate, and I realise you’re not a hundred percent fluent but I just wanted to ask you to double check some of the Japanese for me so I don’t end up blowing everyone up or causing a hurricane or something because I misspelled a word copying it from the internet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon thrust a piece of paper onto Martin’s desk, as if if he did it while he was talking, it would shield him from a ‘no’. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>these things? Like, can’t you read languages you don’t speak?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s shoulders slumped. “I’m trying not to drain the tanks. If I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>things and read statements in the same day it adds up and I get hungry and I… I become a supermarket creep forcing people to tell me their horror stories.” He took a step back from Martin’s desk. “But I can completely understand if you’d rather not, or if your Japanese isn’t fluent enough to help, that’s fine, I know I would be absolutely useless if it was Tamil, I just thought I’d ask-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine.” Martin picked up the sheet of paper and gave it a glance. “This is… a monk chant?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think so?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin snorted. It was certainly Japanese, and definitely Japanese written by someone who’d not written Japanese before. “You’ve used a felt-tip pen on a piece of crappy printer paper.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t exactly have a proper calligraphy set on me, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t read this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh God, that bad?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I can’t read it. What it says. I don’t understand it. Like if I asked you to read some witch spell in Old English.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you have the original? I can at least check your letters are written properly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, yes,” Jon scrambled in his pockets and pulled out a scrumpled piece of paper; a print-out of a blurry jpeg of an old document. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus, Jon. Are you one hundred percent certain you were born in 1980, not 1880?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We all have strengths and weaknesses, Martin.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re so going to be one of the first people dead when the robots take over. All of the old people and you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If we live that long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin huffed a laugh. “I suppose.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anyway,” Jon said as Martin got to work checking Jon’s letters against the old scroll, “Surely my distance to technology would put me at an advantage should the robot uprising occur? Aren’t you more likely to be killed by your Alexa than me, in my old-person home? It’s far less likely that my toaster will gain consciousness.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that the most high-tech thing in your house, Jon, your toaster?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course not! I had to get a new microwave last week. It’s got a digital display and everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oooh,” Martin said, “Best be careful, it might beep you to death in your sleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rather that than death by gameboy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gameboy? Gameboy, Jon, really? That’s what you reached for? Couldn’t find PS4, even an Xbox?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are Xboxes still a thing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Jon, they’re still a thing. Christ, you really are an old man. You should—” Martin bit his tongue, cutting that thought in two before it escaped his traitor lips. He focused back down on the document. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a heavy moment of silence, Jon a still and silent presence on the other side of the desk. “...I should?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing. You should probably let me focus. I don’t want to get it wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” And there it was, crushed disappointment. There was another moment of silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t played a video game since… God I must have been in primary school. My grandmother forced me to play with the neighbour’s son… Keiran. He had a… something. A Gamecube?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you we still in primary school it’d probably be a Ninento 64.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, right. I think he played Mario on it.” Jon thought for a second. “Does… Does Mario still exist?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t actually be asking that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I realise, theoretically, he wouldn’t simply cease existing, but does he have new games?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mario </span>
  </em>
  <span>have new games.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looked up, and saw Jon was watching him with — with an expression Martin had never seen on him before. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit-eating grin</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seriously yourself,” Jon said, even his eyes lit up with that glint of pleasure at having pulled the prank. “I’m not actually a Medieval peasant, I have heard of Mario Kart.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could have fooled me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think you’ll find, Martin, that I just did.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you get out of this, Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Out of what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Making fun of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin watched Jon’s face fall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, no, Martin, that wasn’t my intention at all, I’m sorry I made it seem like— I just, it’s only—” While Jon was tongue-tying himself, Martin finished the last of the corrections and handed the paper back to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I really do have work to do now, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. Right. Of course.” Jon clutched the paper to his chest. “I— I am sorry, Martin. And incredibly thankful for, you know. For everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See you around, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin noted, as he looked down at his desk, finding anything to look like he was busy and actually had a job to do, that Jon still wasn’t leaving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you…” Jon let out a long breath of air, then sounded like he was steeling himself. “Do you have Mario Kart, Martin?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, no, I thought, maybe on your, er, Xbox or your… Wii?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, are you going to stop the weird rain by playing Nintendo?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah. No.” Jon cleared his throat. “I thought, that, you might… if you…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin didn’t look up, hands clenched into fists on his knees. If he looked up, if he saw what Jon’s face was doing, it would all be over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>God, this was the worst. He could feel a lump forming in his throat, knew that if he had to speak, now, it would come out all gargled and sad and lonely and Jon would never leave, and Martin would just cry and it would be the worst, and Jon might even comfort him, probably would, or would try at least, and Martin would — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He bit his lip and managed to convince himself to lift one hand, find a pen, and start writing random words in the empty diary. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. Okay. Best to er, leave you to it, then.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin nodded, and Jon left, closing the door behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun came back. Jon felt it on his face when he woke up, and in his sleep-deprived, alarm-awakened haze it was a blast of goodness in a world of actual eldritch horror. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t a particularly morning person, but it made him snuggle into his duvet just that little bit more, enjoying the last few moments of snooze he had allowed himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time he did swat his alarm clock into silence, he felt his annoyance thaw a little at the morning, and managed to make himself a breakfast that didn’t make his stomach churn. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He watched the window as his bread toasted, then fiddled with the small kitchen radio one of his old flatmates had left when he’d moved out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He listened through the news, busying himself with making a tea, until it got to the weather. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Day 64 of this unending rain…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon didn’t need to listen to the rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been a week since the thunderstorm, and try as they might, Basira and Daisy hadn’t found a way to force another lightning strike out of him. They’d stopped short of staging an actual hostage situation; they’d apparently come too close to triggering Daisy’s Hunt even planning it in the women’s loos when Jon had had to take a statement break, which Jon was incredibly thankful for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira was still on the fence, but Daisy agreed with Jon that it was an external force that had, for some bizarre reason, taken a liking to him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who, or what, though, the three of them had yet to decipher. They were still doubtful about it being Elias, or the Beholding. He wasn’t sure whether sunshine was particularly Peter’s look, but there the list sort of… ran out. There weren’t many people on their side, after all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At one point he thought maybe Martin… but had quickly pushed that aside. It was wishful thinking, and if their last conversation was any indication, Martin had something to do, and he wasn’t ready to share it with Jon yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon ate a mouthful of plain, unbuttered toast, coming to the realisation that he didn’t have anything else in the cupboard to top it with. He had thought… well, that maybe Martin might have loosened up a little. Come back from the Lonely. If he was the one giving Jon the sun and the, er, statements Jon had listened to still held water, maybe they could relax, or pretend to relax, and Martin would teach him how to play Mario Kart and call him an old man for holding the controller wrong, and they’d order take-away and they’d talk and Jon would finally get the chance to really apologise to Martin, for always taking his bullshit out on him, and he’d say thank you and list all the things he’d noticed Martin had done for him, and then he’d ask about the sun, and… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon felt himself warm at the thought, cheeks flushing a little. He hadn’t really thought about all that, about… </span>
  <em>
    <span>romance </span>
  </em>
  <span>since Georgie. The thought didn’t fill him with as much fear as it used to. He never felt fear with her, but he used to, before he’d found words to help him. And he knew Martin knew, and he knew Martin cared, and knew Martin was kind, and he knew Martin would never hurt him, not on purpose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But if Martin really was bringing him the sun, that meant he would be selling off his mortality, his link to the earth. Martin might be disappearing into the Lonely, but he still </span>
  <em>
    <span>existed</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It wasn’t like Martin had started fading into mist or anything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighed, and even to his own ears sounded like a love-sick teenager. He could count the amount of times he’d caught feelings for someone on one hand, and it always took him a while to ease into it, to wade through the skittering heart and the uneasy butterflies and to remind himself that these were good feelings. Positive feelings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obviously he’d never had to contend with the fact that the world was ending at the same time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t like he’d been particularly subtle, talking to Martin. He’d hardly call the performance ‘flirty’, but it was certainly resting squarely on the ‘interested’ scale, wasn’t it? Half the reason he’d even managed to date Georgie was because she’d done some fairly early communication building, and Jon had found that ‘taking the lead’ was a very attractive trait when paired with ‘and asks for consent at all points’. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A flatmate had once asked him what his type was, hoping to find him a rebound relationship after the ex before Georgie. Jon still remembers saying ‘knows what they’re doing’ before the hour-long interrogation he got about physical features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin absolutely did not check the ‘taking the lead’ box, but was certainly taking strides in the ‘knows what they’re doing’ direction and was a very big winner of ‘consent’ points. Jon was also discovering, for what it was worth, how handsome Martin was. Jon never particularly craved physical touch when he was outside of relationships, but his brain was teetering dangerously close to thinking that he was close enough, and he’d caught himself thinking how nice it would be to just… hug Martin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not exactly the most lecherous thought, but you’d think it was some sort of blasphemy, the way his brain kept circling back to it, to thinking how a good, long cuddle down in the library or here, in Jon’s kitchen, or on Martin’s sofa would be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once he had warmed himself up to hugs, he’d been on track to thinking how nice it would be to kiss the worry from Martin’s brow, and it was all downhill from there. He fixated on what it would be like if he brushed the back of his hand against Martin’s, what reaction he’d get from kissing Martin’s neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon groaned, covering his face with his hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was actually embarrassing, how tame his fantasies were. But hey, he was in a coma, not-quite-dead-but-not-living-either, dream walking through strangers’ nightmares barely a month ago, so he probably deserved something mundane in his life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He scarfed the rest of his toast, necked the tea and slapped his own cheeks. Alright, focus. Some weirdo was blessing him with the sun, and if it was human it didn’t have long until it lost contact with the earth. He had work to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin heard the voices before he could place where they were coming from. He thought maybe Daisy and Basira were shouting loud enough that they were drifting up from the archives to his third-floor office, but he turned to his window, realising belatedly that the sun was shining, which meant that Jon was outside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d somehow managed to get the sky to co-operate now; no longer needing to physically activate the ‘prayer’ whenever he knew Jon was leaving. It just knew to help him, which meant it could extend to when Jon woke up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin felt creepy even thinking that thought, but if he was going to brighten Jon’s day, he was going to brighten Jon’s day, right from the moment Jon woke up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin wheeled his chair over to the window, watching as Daisy and Basira did a weird obon-like dance around Jon as he read off a ream of Japanese in his best chanting-voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” The Archive definitely got </span>
  <em>
    <span>weird</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but this was something else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cracked the window open so he could hear the chanting better, and was treated with the harmonising from Basira and Daisy. He half wished he didn’t keep his mobile locked in the drawer so he could film this: it would make excellent blackmail fodder the moment everyone was sure they weren’t being attacked by Evil. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rested his elbows on the windowsill, watching the dance with growing fondness. Martin was one hundred percent certain that his friends had absolutely no clue what they were doing, but they were doing it anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Man, he was tired. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt very suddenly aware of just how tired he was, like he was watching the battery of his energy slowly drip down from 10%... to 8%... to 3%...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rushing of air. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some part of Martin’s brain registered blacking out; that fuzzy knowledge that his chin hurt from crunching against the windowsill, the heavy press against his cheek that distantly he could register as hardwood against his cheek… the lightheaded emptiness, not knowing here from there— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>but then he was falling, through unhindered air, eyes to the heavens, nothing but the wind whipping through his hair, those chime-like twinkles from the rain collecting around him, the careening of the clouds—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>and everything was so, so blue — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>and then he landed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin frowned, sitting up in the… grass? that surrounded him. He ran his hand through the green threads and felt the soft springiness of grass, but without the rocks and earth below it. It was strange, it felt almost like he should be pushing through it. Like his weight shouldn’t be held, like he could never be sat here, like this, unless he had given something up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like he didn’t have a connection to the earth anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin got to his feet, slow and unsteady, as if he could rock this cloud enough that he would fall through it. He took a step. Then another. A third, fourth… and remained on the cloud. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a hundred steps to reach the end of his cloud platform. He could not have said if the journey had taken him minutes, or if he’d passed decades here, alone, in the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked off of the edge of his cloud, and could see… earth. Earth. England, if he were to take a stab. London, with context clues. London enveloped in thunderstorms but for one, tiny sliver of a break. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jon,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he registered, distant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon still got sunshine, while he was up here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, no. Now that he resided here, he knew he could ask for more. He could see the thundering black clouds, and he told them to </span>
  <em>
    <span>leave them alone</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And they did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like watching the sun melting ice, the clouds began to dissipate, and he could feel the sky around him calm. A shoal of fish-like raindrops came to investigate him and he let them wind around his arm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They played with him, like that, softly brushing up against him on his cloud Island, and he let them. He felt empty; no cold, no warm, just present. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, warmth. Like a hand pressed against his cheek. He brought his own hand up, sending the fish skittering away, but there was nothing, nobody there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His tongue felt heavy, like he was realising he'd been given an anaesthetic. He had trouble swallowing, then realised he'd yet to breathe, that his mouth felt parched…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was something in the wind, too, like a whisper. Familiar and echoing but just put of reach...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyelids felt heavy, and for one gut-wrenching second, he realised this cloud could no longer hold him and he fell —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He startled up and felt arms around him - he struggled out of the grip, pushing himself away from his captor, dating across the floor - </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Martin, Martin! It's me, Martin, it's just me-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin pushed himself into the corner of his office and stared back at his captor, at Jon, kneeling on the floor, arms cradling his recently-kicked stomach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Jon?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm here, Martin. It's me."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What- why?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You fainted, Martin. At least, I think… I came to check up on you and I found you on the floor…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You were… you were dancing, with Daisy and Basira."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon's brow furrowed, watching Martin with dawning dead. "Three days ago. Have you been out, up here, for three days? Oh, God. Oh my god, Martin, I'm so sorry, if I had just thought- I should have come to check in on you sooner," Jon made a broken sound, almost a whimper. "Ok, okay, you stay here. I'm going to get you some water and some food. Don't move, Martin, I'm warning you." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm fine, Jon, really-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The look Jon gave him was more than enough to shut him up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Jon left, Martin glanced out of the window. A midsummer day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time Jon had returned with a sandwich, a mug of tea and a bottle of water, there was a light rain splashing against the window. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon closed the wide-open window before helping Martin up to the desk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I didn't want to upset your stomach so I went for a ham salad," Jon babbled, "I can understand if you don't eat ham anymore, it's just, the alternatives were prawn mayo or cheese and onion and I really didn't think you'd want to risk those, and I think you're lactose intolerant, so, cheese, and-"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ham salad is fine, thank you, Jon."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon hovered, watching as Martin picked the sandwich apart, taking small bites, not particularly feeling up to eating. He did finish the water, though, and made good headway on his tea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon fidgeted for a moment then deposited a selection of individually wrapped biscuits. "I stole these from the meeting room on the second floor. If you don't feel like eating, you should at least line your stomach with something. I think the oat ones are vegan."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin looked down at the selection and snorted. They were the fancy ones, the packaging decorated with English roses and fancy silhouettes of Victorians in period dress, a far cry from the bourbons and custard creams Martin had kept in stock in the break room. And that Jon had stolen them, too… it was ridiculous, for some reason. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, and I er.. a weak tea with soy milk and two sugars.” Jon nudged it closer to Martin on the desk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you won’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>something serious, like something that might get you killed, but you will </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>how I take my tea?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is serious,” Jon said without pause. “You’re important to me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>tea</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Jon, I’d have drunk it with a splash of milk and no sugar.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you shouldn’t have to. I actually should have known, we’ve been working together for years and you make me mine three times a day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s just tea,” Martin repeated, weakly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing about you is </span>
  <em>
    <span>just </span>
  </em>
  <span>to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin bit his lip, feeling that familiar lump forming in his throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s abismal, by the way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The voice I got in my head when I asked how you’d like your tea. ‘Show the tea bag to the water’. It’s hardly tea, you’re basically drinking hot milk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, I like my drinks sweet and milky.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re Asian, Martin, you’re supposed to taste the tea in the tea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re British, Jon, we’re supposed to make sure there’s no flavour in anything we colonised.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon shook his head, the deepest creases of concern softening from his expression. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin dunked an off-brand hobnob in his tea to prove his point, then nearly lost it, jumping as lightning flashed across the window. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus,” Jon said, attention on the now-torrential downpour happening outside. “It was a 30 degree summer day out there a second ago.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve been watching other bits of England, and the UK, and the world to see if we’d just outsourced the weirdness with our ritual, but it seemed like we actually cleared it up.” Jon sighed. “Though I guess we just… put it on hiatus, and it’s been building up instead.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s attention remained on his biscuit, one half soggy and ready to fall to pieces. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Three days of summer after three months,” Jon continued. “I’m sorry you missed it, Martin. Bit sad, to have been knocked out… for all three… days…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin glanced up and caught Jon squinting out of the window, the recently departed dent in his forehead making a spectacular return. “I don’t suppose you went overboard on reading statements and needed a three day nap, Martin?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shrugged one shoulder, desperately thinking up an excuse that might hold any water. “The, er, Lonely, it’s… nearly…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So the weather’s part of the Lonely?” Jon asked, apparently to himself. “To keep people indoors. To make sure people don’t leave the house. Cancel plans. Big events get rained off, summer faits get postponed and postponed, footie in the park, summer barbeques… a whole summer, spent in winter. Seasonal depression for the whole year.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it’s not — they’re not —” but even as he was saying the words, Martin paused. He hadn’t thought of them as being linked, but… what proof did he have of that? Peter hadn’t been in to give him an evil, cryptic look but when did he ever? What were the chances that Martin, a random person, had been gifted the spiritual connection to the sky; because he was half-Japanese? Because he happened to be the only person to notice the beam of light in the sky? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, no… he was chosen. It was all another part of the ploy. Give him another way to help save Jon. To make Jon happier, to convince him to lose more and more of himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside, the rain was turning to hail, hard pebbles of ice shattering against the window. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin was incensed. At himself, for not putting two and two together, for not recognising that just because he didn’t feel fear didn’t mean he wasn’t part of the Fear, but mostly at Peter, at the Lonely. If that’s what they wanted the plan to be, some jumped up fantasy fiction, then fine, but don’t try to make Martin the </span>
  <em>
    <span>chosen one</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the protagonist in this B-rate anime plotline. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon was watching him come to this realisation with a look of intense concentration. Like he was prepared at any moment to break out a Beholding power to combat whatever Martin shot at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin tipped back in his desk chair, pressed his hands to his face and let out a silent scream. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once he’d gotten it out of his system, he sat back up again, looking over at the terrified Jon. “Peter </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking </span>
  </em>
  <span>Lukas,” Martin said as way of an explanation. “I’ve been a real muppet.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So it’s you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Making sure you woke up in the sun? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, Jon, surprise, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I’m the mug who’s been selling off his mortality so you could have one nice thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But why, Martin?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>know why</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Martin? Why do </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span>? It’s hardly a bouquet of roses!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because-” Martin made a frustrated noise, letting out a gush of air. “How are you Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m asking how you are. How are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m okay, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t...” Jon said, sounding helpless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you’re always trying to make me feel better by saying you’re ‘okay’ when you’re the one who looks like you’re about to collapse! Because I feel like I’m the only one who can see you’ve put the whole world on your shoulders. Because you’re not </span>
  <em>
    <span>okay </span>
  </em>
  <span>and for once, I want you to be! Not good, not brilliant, not not saving the world, but not rained on. ‘Better now the sun’s out, cheers.’ </span>
  <em>
    <span>Okay.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin took a deep breath. “That’s my big dream, my ‘master plan’. I want to be the reason you realise you’re okay. The reason you know that, in the end, after everything, we’ll be alright.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But-” Jon said, apparently out of habit, for once his quick brain working to catch up. Then, with absolute clarity and with a voice that was more certain than Martin had ever heard, “You already </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to just </span>
  <em>
    <span>say </span>
  </em>
  <span>nice things to me, Jon. I get it. I get that you’ve got nicer. That you’re more considerate. I’ve forgiven you treating me like shit; I do actually get it. Just accepting everything I say now isn’t going to make me happier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin,” Jon said, coming closer, “I don’t need you to hurt yourself for me to be alright. Forgiving me, forgetting I didn’t treat you like a human for </span>
  <em>
    <span>years. </span>
  </em>
  <span>We need to talk about this, work through it, not just pretend to accept it and move on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Jon-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not fine! It’s not fine. I’m not saying I deserve punishment, that I want you to hurt me back, but you don’t deserve to be the one carrying all this hurt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life apologising to me, Jon. I don’t want every look you give me to be full of guilt. I want us to talk like actual humans, </span>
  <em>
    <span>flirt like actual humans</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon paused. His shoulders slumped, and he gave a weak laugh. “Yes, I think I know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Despite evidence to the contrary,” Martin said, “I do have more than two braincells. I know you’re going to regret how you treated me. I know. I don’t want to talk about it. That’s my boundary: I don’t want to talk about it. You have your guilt. You work through it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s gaze dropped to the ground, then he nodded. “Okay. ...But in return, I want something from you, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want the sun back, Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Jon looked up, his eyes were a threat. “Martin, I will be the opposite of alright if you die because of me. Die </span>
  <em>
    <span>for </span>
  </em>
  <span>me. I will be very much </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>alright.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shuddered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry to interrupt,” Basira said, standing in the doorway and obviously not sorry, arms crossed against her chest, evidently relishing having watched Jon and Martin jump. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, Basira-” Jon said, his cheeks reddening now under her arched eyebrow- “I was just, Martin, I found him-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Have you seen outside?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon and Martin turned to the window. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Snow?” Martin asked, incredulous. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon slowly turned to Martin and obviously trying to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>not obvious </span>
  </em>
  <span>mouthed ‘you?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only took one fleeting glance at Basira to gather that she had already cottoned on; either having been listening outside the door for longer than Martin felt comfortable with, or because of Jon’s absolute lack of subtlety. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin shook his head no, but… “I don’t… I don’t think I was supposed to come back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come back? From where?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s eyes looked towards the sky, and Jon and Basira copied him, like they could see through the ceiling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was… it was like I was trapped there. Up on a cloud.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Basira made a vaguely amused ‘pshh’ noise, but didn’t dismiss him, so he continued. “I was watching you dance, then I was falling and… I landed on a… cloud. An island, up in the sky.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you escaped?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” Martin frowned. It felt distant, now, like trying to recall a dream. It had been like a mist had rolled in, he supposed, because he could hear a voice through it, like you would hear a voice in a foggy forest. “I heard a voice. I felt… something. I felt a connection.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s hand touched his cheek. He looked up, met Jon’s eye. “I felt you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Astaghfirullah,” Basira said under her breath. “I will actually kill you if you’re being poetic right now, Blackwood.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I… really. I felt him. He brought me back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like my rib,” Jon said, something like vindication in his eyes. “An anchor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, I guess I wasn’t exactly thinking about your </span>
  <em>
    <span>ribs</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Martin said, “but yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And so, because you’re real gay for Jon you fell off of a cloud and now the weather’s fucked for everyone?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin winced. “Yeah? Probably? I think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great. So how do we send you back?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Jon asked, “No-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon, he’s one dude. He goes back to the sky, we all get our weather back. I’d do it, and don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin-</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you fancy him so he gets a free pass.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wouldn’t let you do it either. Not you, not Daisy, I tried to stop </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tim</span>
  </em>
  <span>-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look outside, Jon. It’s august. That car’s already got a foot of snow on it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am not letting Martin sacrifice himself just because we’re freaking out about some</span>
  <em>
    <span> snow.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p><span>“It’s </span><em><span>settling.</span></em><span> When was the last time you saw snow settle</span> <span>in London?” </span></p><p>
  <span>“And I’m saying we don’t have to jump on the first plan we think of and let someone die because it might work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what’s the alternative, wait until the next bout of freak weather hits? Wait until people start dying? Wait until it’s rained for three straight years and London starts to drown?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t I get a say in this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Jon and Basira said as one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ll just say something like ‘it’s fine, Jon, I’d rather you had the sun, my sacrifice is nothing’,” Jon said in a voice that was starting to crack. “I am not having that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But Jon-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Jon pushed his long hair back, out of his face. “No, Martin. No, you are not going to lose your mortality because Peter </span>
  <em>
    <span>goddamned </span>
  </em>
  <span>Lukas decided he wants some people to feel a bit lonely in the rain. No. That’s his plan. That’s who would win. Not us, not me. I do not win; I am not happy if you die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s attention returned to Basira. “That’s who would win,” he repeated. “Peter Lukas. The Lonely. And probably Elias too, while we’re at it. One more notch on the ‘make Jonathan Sims wish everything would just end’ belt of bastardry. If Martin’s gone, I’m lost.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin felt his heart begin to clench, like it couldn’t take the pressure. Like he’d spent three months repressing all of this, all of these feelings, like now they were punishing him for it, jamming knives through his insides to make him remember, make him remember what it felt like to </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span>, to make him choke on them, to make him writhe under their power. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t want this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t want this hurt. He didn’t want these feelings, he didn’t want to be here, to have to choose, to be forced to choose between himself and—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt nauseous and staggered back, falling,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Falling into the sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Free. Free from all that pain. From that suffering. From feeling, crushing and grounding him. His whole life, a wound-up spring, a tight coil of pain, a punching bag and a crutch, battered and hurting and </span>
  <em>
    <span>no more. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Here, in the sky, he didn’t have that. Didn’t need that. Here, he could breathe. Deep, clear breaths. Shoulders untensed, body floating. Nothing to push him down, nothing to grind him to dust. Only air, only freedom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He took his breaths. His deserved breaths, his free breaths, his air, his time, his sky, and wondered at how easy it was, here. Nothing to keep him locked down, nothing to keep him gripped and grabbed at from all directions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No roots.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>No. Not roots, nothing to bind him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just the blue. The startling, beautiful, blue.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin, Martin, I’m here—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>No pain. No heartache. No longing, no suffering, just him, in the sky, forever, alone—</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Martin!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He clenched his eyes shut, let the wind fill his ears, let himself be weightless, let himself fall. This was all for the best. He was safe here, he couldn’t be hurt here, he couldn’t get his hopes up here—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A pulse. A pulse, so familiar, but just out of reach. A pulse, building, in his ears, like… like something he could no longer remember having. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind tried to smother it, to carry it away from him, but he could feel it now, drumming in his ears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like drowning. Like hearing </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that familiar beat, under water, muted but </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hand came to his chest, fist curled into his shirt— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A beat. A heart—</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Martin!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin opened his eyes and remembered. He had a heart. He had a heartbeat. A pulse. He had Jon—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon, with his arm out, reaching for him, fingers stretched as far as they could go, trying, trying desperately to reach him. “Martin!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin! I’m here, I’m, I’m here, you’re not alone, please—” Jon made a swipe, but tumbled, sending himself into a cartwheel. Once he’d righted himself, he tried again, and again,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s own fingers twitched, his heart acting before his mind could catch up-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You shouldn’t have come,” he said, and the wind tried to rip the words away from them, but he could see Jon hear them, his desperate arms reaching out again, closer, nearly glancing off of him. “You should leave me here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s eyes went hard, like he was clutching at some power inside of him. “Give me your hand, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin’s arm moved, compelled, but he fought against it. “I want this, Jon, I want to help you. I want to give you blue skies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon’s face became a storm: angry tears and gritted teeth as he took a deep breath. “I want to see you, safe,” he roared, “More than I ever want to see a blue sky again!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The final layer shrouding Martin’s heart broke, and with it flushed out the tears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were pulled from him and flew, glittering in the blue sky like jewels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” Martin said, not able to look anywhere but at him. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin spread himself out wide, slowing his fall, letting himself drag so Jon could finally, finally catch up with him and then he was there, joining their fingers together, catching Martin, tangling their arms together until they were spinning in tandem, head down, towards the earth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m here, Martin. I’m here. I see you. I have you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I go with you, the sky will be hungry. It’ll scream and shout and someone else will have to sacrifice themselves to be here, to keep the wind company.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Then… then offer something of yourself, something big, that you could leave here, to feed them. Something you no longer want."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something big. Something that had been with him, his entire life. Something that had consumed him, overwhelmed him, had defined him for years. Something that trapped him and fed him and kept him in its grasp… Something so intrinsically </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>that he had mistaken it for his heart for years, and years, and years. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grinned, wide, as Jon gripped their hands together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want something to eat?” he cried at the sky, and he could hear it respond, the crystal shimmer of rain, the squalling wind. “You can have it. This loneliness. The Loneliness. I don’t need it to protect me anymore. I don’t want it. I’ll take the heartbreak, and I’ll be okay!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck you, Peter Lukas</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Jon screamed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So fuck you, Peter Lukas!” Martin echoed, and they fell, together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They woke in Martin’s empty office, hands still gripped tight together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stood up, bashful, neither daring to pull away, knowing the other would jump back if they broke the moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t mean it, did you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, fuck Peter Lukas?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Martin laughed, fiddling with Jon’s fingers, thumb glancing across Jon’s palm. “That you’d never want to see a blue sky again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t say that.” Jon did not look away from Martin. “I would be annoyed if I never saw the sun again. I just said I’d prefer to see you. I’d sacrifice sunny summers any day.” Jon didn’t smile, didn’t laugh. He spoke honestly, like he was just saying a true statement, one that needed to be said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plus,” Jon said, and now he began to look away, a blush slowly rising on his cheeks. “It’s not like we get much sunlight down in the archive anyway, so it’s not much of a sacrifice…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin laughed, and pulled Jon in towards him, enveloping him a hug that Jon was quick to melt into. “You’re ridiculous,” Martin told him, holding him close, trying to use every ounce of his heart to tell Jon how much he loved him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Jon said, gripping tight at the back of Martin’s shirt, digging his face into Martin’s neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you for coming to save me, Jon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon laughed, a small huff of air on Martin’s neck. “I would say ‘any time’ but I really, really don’t want this to be a recurring occurrence, Martin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll try to remember not to become a sky maiden again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Please.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As much as Jon was pleased to get blue skies back, to leave his weatherproof parker and his umbrella at home on his morning commute, at least for another month until Autumn came again, he very much did not resent Martin’s invitation over to his house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They played what Jon liked to call ‘The Mario Kart’ because it never failed to get Martin to make his </span>
  <em>
    <span>annoyed </span>
  </em>
  <span>noise, and he liked beating Martin in The Mario Kart because Martin still didn’t believe that Jon wasn’t a Victorian relic and would voluntarily give himself disadvantages. Jon liked timing blue shells with kisses so that Martin took a second more to recover. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked making Martin his gross, weak, sugary tea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked having a cuddle when they got home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked being </span>
  <em>
    <span>okay</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for once. To say it and to mean it. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We’re going to be alright.</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>bazemayonnaise.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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